Suppose the looking glass smashes, the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person which is seen by other people - what an airless, shallow, bald, prominent world it becomes! A world not to be lived in. As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror that accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes.
If he be so resolved, I can o'ersway him; for he loves to hear That unicorns may be betrayed with trees And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, Lions with toils, and men with flatterers
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them,-- Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun.
The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.
Break the glass, please, and free us from all these damned rules, from needing to find an explanation for everything, from doing only what others approve of.
When you're thirsty and it seems that you could drink the entire ocean that's faith; when you start to drink and finish only a glass or two that's science.
You really have to bring your game and know what you want to do. And then, there are the producers and the writers and the director on the other side of the glass, and what they want. You have to be malleable to what's going to work, and you have to stay in the framework of the context.
As a viewed myself in a fragment of looking-glass..., I was so impressed with a sense of vague awe at my appearance ... that I was seized with a violent tremour.
After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.